Smart finger uses sensors to detect substances such as glass, silicon and wood with more than 90 per cent accuracy, which could be useful for robotic manufacturing tasks
Here s What Happened to People s Brains After Receiving a Robotic Third Thumb
21 MAY 2021
New research with an artificial robotic digit has yielded surprising results - in just a few days, people using the thumb were able to operate it naturally to perform complex tasks like building towers from wooden blocks, or stirring your coffee while holding it.
Not only that, but neural scans showed that the presence of the third thumb had actually changed what was going on in the brain, even when the extra appendage was taken off: having a robo-thumb attached for a few days shifted the brain s representation of flesh and blood fingers.
20 May 2021
by: Juwon Song
A robotic third thumb can change how the biological hand is represented in the brain. | Dani Clode Design and The Plasticity Lab, UCL
Participants using an extra thumb to go about their daily tasks readily adapted to the robotic appendage over five days, but the relationship between their brain and their biological hand changed over this period. The new study, published in the May 19 issue of
Science Robotics, addresses key unresolved questions regarding human brain adaptation to augmentative devices.
The study found that people quickly learned to control the extra thumb in daily life, but behavioral tests and MRI scans showed that the brain space devoted to representing the biological hand shrank over the same period.
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